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benrothke writes "It's said that truth is stranger than fiction, as fiction has to make sense. Had The Chinese Information War: Espionage, Cyberwar, Communications Control and Related Threats to United States Interests been written as a spy thriller, it would have been a fascinating novel of international intrigue. But the book is far from a novel. It's a dense, well-researched overview of China's cold-war like cyberwar tactics against the US to regain its past historical glory and world dominance." Read below for the rest of Ben's review.

The Chinese Information War: Espionage, Cyberwar, Communications Control and Related Threats to United States Interests

author

Dennis Poindexter

pages

192

publisher

McFarland

rating

9/10

reviewer

Ben Rothke

ISBN

978-0786472710

summary

Fascinating overview on the cyberwar with China

Author Dennis Poindexter shows that Chinese espionage isn't made up of lone wolves. Rather it's under the directive and long-term planning of the Chinese government and military.

Many people growing up in the 1940's expressed the sentiment "we were poor, but didn't know it". Poindexter argues that we are in a cyberwar with China; but most people are oblivious to it.

Rather than being a polemic against China, Poindexter backs it up with extensive factual research. By the end of the book, the sheer number of guilty pleas by Chinese nationals alone should be a staggering wake-up call.

In February, Mandiant released their groundbreaking report APT1: Exposing One of Chinas Cyber Espionage Units, which focused on APT1, the most prolific Chinese cyber-espionage group that Mandiant tracked. APT1 has conducted a cyber-espionage campaign against a broad range of victims since at least 2006. The report has evidence linking them to China's 2nd Bureau of the People's Liberation Army.

China is using this cyberwar to their supreme advantage and as Poindexter writes on page 1: until we see ourselves in a war, we can't fight it effectively. Part of the challenge is that cyberwar does not fit the definition of what a war generally is because the Chinese have changed the nature of war to carry it out.

Poindexter makes his case in fewer than 200 pages and provides ample references in his detailed research; including many details, court cases and guilty verdicts of how the Chinese government and military work hand in hand to achieve their goals.

The book should of interest to everyone given the implications of what China is doing. If you are planning to set up shop in China, be it R&D, manufacturing or the like, read this book. If you have intellectual property or confidential data in China, read this book as you need to know the risks before you lose control of your data there.

Huawei Technologies, a Chinese multinational telecommunications equipment and services firm; now the largest telecommunications equipment maker in the world is detailed in the book. Poindexter details a few cases involving Huawei and writes that if Huawei isn't linked to Chinese intelligence, then it's the most persecuted company in the history of international trade.

The book details in chapter 2 the intersection between cyberwar and economic war. He writes that any foreign business in China is required to share detailed design documents with the Chinese government in order to do business there. For many firms, the short-term economic incentives blind them to the long-term risks of losing control of their data. The book notes that in the Cold War with Russia, the US understood what Russia was trying to do. The US therefore cut back trade with Russia, particularly in areas where there might be some military benefit to them. But the US isn't doing that with China.

Chapter 2 closes with a damming indictment where Poindexter writes that the Chinese steal our technology, rack up sales back to us, counterfeit our goods, take our jobs and own a good deal of our debt. The problem he notes is that too many people focus solely on the economic relations between the US and China, and ignore the underpinnings of large-scale cyber-espionage.

Chapter 6 details that the Chinese have developed a long-term approach. They have deployed numerous sleepers who often wait decades and only then work slowly and stealthily. A point Poindexter makes many times is that the Chinese think big, but move slow.

Chapter 7 is appropriately titles The New Cold War. In order to win this war, Poindexter suggest some radical steps to stop it. He notes that the US needs to limit trade with China to items we can't get anywhere else. He says not to supply China with the rope that will be used to hang the US on.

He writes that the Federal Government has to deal with the issue seriously and quickly, to protect its telecommunications interests so that China isn't able to cut it all off one day. He also notes that national security must no longer take a backseat to price and cheap labor.

Poindexter writes that the US Government must take a long-view to the solution and he writes that it will take 10 years to build up the type of forces that that would be needed to counter the business and government spying that the Chinese are doing.

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is the archetypal wake-up call book. Poindexter has written his version of Silent Spring,but it's unlikely that any action will be taken. As the book notes, the Chinese are so blatantly open about their goals via cyber-espionage, and their denials of it so arrogant, that business as usual simply carries on.

The Chinese portray themselves as benevolent benefactors, much like the Kanamits in To Serve Man. Just as the benevolence of the Kanamits was a façade, so too is what is going on with the cold cyberwar with China.

The book is an eye-opening expose that details the working of the Chinese government and notes that for most of history, China was the world's dominating force. The Chinese have made it their goal to regain that dominance.

The book states what the Chinese are trying to accomplish and lays out the cold facts. Will there be a response to this fascinating book? Will Washington take action? Will they limit Chinese access to strategic US data? Given Washington is operating in a mode of sequestration, the answer should be obvious.

The message detailed in The Chinese Information War: Espionage, Cyberwar, Communications Control and Related Threats to United States Interests should be a wake-up call. But given that it is currently ranked #266,881 on Amazon, it seems as if most of America is sleeping through this threat.

You are right in you claim in that that the US is measured as the largest manufacture. The thing is that the measurements are done wrongly [ourfuture.org]. You buy a Chinese toy dog for $0.2; you add a little label at a cost of $0.03 with $0.07 of labour ; you sell it for $2. You claim to have done $1.70 of manufacturing. The real truth is that the Chinese factory did $2 worth of manufacturing but doesn't yet have the contacts to realise that value.

If its not highly automated or skirts the law somehow it is usually done in another country.

Why? It costs a decent amount of money to ship across the world. If you can build it here and do it cheaper than an army of underpaid workers plus shipping it will be here. Automation almost always wins. Except in 'one off' building. Things such as the iPhone can be automated to a point. But some assembly is required also next year the whole thing will be a dif

The factory may well come back. The factory jobs are gone for good. What exactly ARE we going to do when there are far more people than jobs? As Boston said way back when, "Lots of people have to make a legal living, can't decide who they should be".

The factory may well come back. The factory jobs are gone for good....

I've seen this described by economists: In the early 1900s, there was a huge increase in the "productivity" of horses on farms. This was, of course, due to the introduction of machinery. The farms' output per horse thus increased. But it didn't benefit the horses much.

Now it's a century later, and we've had a huge increase in factory productivity, as measured in output per worker. This is not much benefitting the workers. And we'll likely suffer the same fate as the horses.

That implies we could all get by working 3 days a month, which is just silly.

6 out of 10 should be working full time (or more) producing enough that 1, because of who his parents were, can have tons of stuff. In return they get a slice of the pie that's almost enough to be nearly comfortable. Siphon a bit off from those 6 to support the other 3 - just enough that they don't get desperate.

I believe our malaise lies not with the Chinese, but the banks. For a long time we fought them off, but eventually they persuaded our Government to give them the privilege of printing unbacked money, then the right to collect interest on money they printed. Basically, they get paid rent for what was never theirs to let. The only way the banks can be paid back is with yet more ( interest bearing ) loans. They make friends with people in high places, so no-one has the power to stand up to them, lest they

"We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have i

BS. If you can do it by a robot, it gets done in the US... well, until the EPA demands that all robots belong to a union or does something so stupid that it causes all manufacturing to jump to China like they did with the entire steel industry.

Even engineering and design jobs. The place I work for has called Tata and replaced their entire dev staff with overseas contractors in the past 18 months. Now, for 10% the operating costs (no additional HVAC needed, no worry about employee liabilities, under a thr

And an even bigger consumer of manufactured products, ergo our persistent trade deficit. We have, and will continue to have, a trade deficit in mineral wealth (most especially including oil), our vaunted surplus in services has never taken off as predicted, and we probably won't ever have a much bigger surplus in agriculture. Manufacturing was (believe it or not folks) our main surplus for many years, and it doesn't look like there's anything to replace it, so shipping factories to China doesn't seem like i

In terms of worker productivity it isn't close. The average US worker produces almost 10 times as much value as the average Chinese worker.

well..you use a lot of the produce. that production isn't at risk by the chinese. but it's not leaving the USA that much either.which is also a bit why you shouldn't be that worried about the current situation as it is amassing wealth(physical goods!) into usa. if you default on the debts to china or whoever you end up with the net gain of physical stuff.

but I guess my original point was aimed more at stealing yer seeeecreeeets. look, if I can't buy an american made cisco router anyhow what the fuck does it

Yes, I know we've heard this argument before, but consider this: what are we producing? Just the larger stuff? What about the smaller stuff? Go to any local store (like Wal-Mart) and see how many things are made in the U.S.A. If all we are producing are the larger things, our expertise is waning. It is hard for small businesses to start production and grow when you need tens or hundreds or millions of dollars to start production. China has the ability to start small. We are losing it. When the big bu

...of meeting the Chinese (or whomever) on this battlefield, but the sad fact is that we are not. Oh, we're death on "the threat" to RIAA and MPIAA interests, and we damned sure are doing what it takes to smoke out "teh terrorists" (all the while laying waste to our citizens liberties), but as a match for concerted, state-run effort the one we face with China, we're all but unarmed.

...of meeting the Chinese (or whomever) on this battlefield, but the sad fact is that we are not. Oh, we're death on "the threat" to RIAA and MPIAA interests, and we damned sure are doing what it takes to smoke out "teh terrorists" (all the while laying waste to our citizens liberties), but as a match for concerted, state-run effort the one we face with China, we're all but unarmed.

Given what we know (and obviously don't know) about the NSA, how can you come to that conclusion? It's not like we're going to brag about it if we're doing it...

I know that the military, who has a substantial need to be "up to speed" in this arena has, historically, been way behind. To be fair, it's tough to for them to recruit talent from that particular pool.
I believe that the NSA has an easier time of it (recruiting the necessary talent), but that's conjecture, so let's not bother debating what neither of us can substantiate in the least.
I know that the federal government, at the policy making level, at least, is seriously clue-challenged when it comes to thi

It's a dense, well-researched overview of China's cold-war like cyberwar tactics against the US to regain its past historical glory and world dominance.

How do I know how much of it I should believe? (Other than the fact that I read it on the internet.)

Yeah, you'd have to be delusional to think that countries play nice with each other, but seriously, how do we know how much of this is fact and how much is fearmongering (or cashing in on existing fears), or politics?

you'd have to be delusional to think that countries play nice with each other, but seriously, how do we know how much of this is fact and how much is fearmongering

The book sounds over-the-top, but that doesn't mean that everything recommended to fight this is a bad idea. Is there any doubt in your mind that China's industrial espionage is over-the-top, and that joint ventures between US and Chinese companies are something done for the sake of "technology transfer"? In some cases that's quite openly true. For example, GE happily showed China how to build gas turbines (half a step from jet engines) and is now happily showing them how to build the engines (via a joint v

How do you know this is not just another propaganda stunt from the west? Mentioning the cold war is admitting that there are at least 2 perspectives to this story. The banging of the drums of war tone of this article certainly worries me. You may claim all kind of things. Fact is that China is defensive in it's positions and pacifism is in China's interest and strategy. The kind of transfers of technological knowledge you are talking about are perfectly legal and necessary so China doesn't have to go the sa

My understanding is that territorial disputes over islands, particularly uninhabited islands, rarely has much to do with the island itself. The goal is to gain control over large areas of the seabed.

Once a nation gains international recognition of ownership of an island, they gain control over all the seabed between that island and the continental territory. Furthermore due to international law they gain 12 miles beyond the perimeter of the island. This

This strange form of denial is seen everywhere Chinese espionage is discussed. The person is utterly convinced that China is, in fact, not doing what is in its own best interest. No, that takes a back seat to boogeyman fear-mongering. Because I think it could possibly be so, then it must be. China couldn't possibly be behaving this way, because if it were so then I'd have to re-question some of my core beliefs.

what's the big deal?i'm old enough to remember the nuclear cold war and as soon as it finished the french and other allies started spying on us commerciallyeveryone spies on each other. you do it even if you don't plan on going to war. you do it so that when you negotiate you know how much to give and what to ask for.

It's a matter of degree. It was one thing for the French or whomever to try to find out about the details of a bid by some US company to a foreign country, but China takes it much further. Very high level execs had to worry about being spied on, but in China every 2-bit businessman is well advised to leave their cell phone and laptop at home.

He notes that the US needs to limit trade with China to items we can't get anywhere else. He says not to supply China with the rope that will be used to hang the US on.

1. Not bloody likely.2. Too fucking late.

China plans for the long term

Well, duh.

People who have been looking at China for the past two decades have been screaming this at the top of their lungs, only for this concept to fall on deaf ears. The US has forgotten about the lesson of Samuel Slater, and China has picked it up and they are schooling us.

Where the manufacturing goes, so does the science and engineering. And that's what the Chinese want. They want what we had and we're giving it to them hand-over-fist for short term profits.

The "problem" is cultural, and it is entirely self-made.

And it ain't gonna get fixed until US businesses start looking at the long term, which has about the same chance of happening as a snowball's chance in Hell.

The problem is political, not cultural. Remember all the choices people had in 1992 if they were opposed to NAFTA? Me neither. Sure there was Perot, but no 3rd party candidate has won a presidential election since Lincoln. Both the D and R were for it. Yes I know that wasn't directly related to China, but it was the beginning of the whole so-called free trade scam in the US.

Where the manufacturing goes, so does the science and engineering. And that's what the Chinese want. They want what we had and we're giving it to them hand-over-fist for short term profits.

Everybody wants science and engineering. Name one country that will say no to advancing science and technology.

We're giving them that hand-over-fist? You'd rather have China stay a third world country? Wouldn't you want to add a billion more to the first world, creating new products, producing innovation and advancing s

We're giving them that hand-over-fist? You'd rather have China stay a third world country?

False dichotomy. Many countries have vastly increased their standard of living without the US transferring it's technological know-how and manufacturing capacity wholesale. I have faith in the Chinese people to figure it out for themselves, but I'm puzzled why you have such a low opinion of their abilities.

I agree with you that people think China have somewhat a lower level of ability and are scared of the fact that one day they might just out-innovate us. American exceptionalism and such.

Companies from Taiwan have shown a glimpse what is possible and now with Chinese companies like Huawei and such coming forward, there is no question that China is now developing and innovating their own companies.

Just look at the computer. LCD screens, motherboards were refined and their costs cut from companies in Taiwa

I would rather that US businesses invest in the US. Because if you want customers, you have to have customers that can pay you. If they can't pay, they can't be customers.

But that's not what's happening. If you buy a Cross pen these days, it's not made in Lincoln, RI, anymore, it's made in China. Because short term profits rule the day here. We have been shipping all our high skilled jobs overseas. Wh

Science and technology isn't something finite that either can be here or in China. It can be both places or we can specialize in different fields. There is so much that needs to be in the done in the fields of science and so many places to for technology to go that there's plenty to go around if we could just stop bickering and get working. It's almost frustrating sometimes how glacial some improvements are. If you had a billion or two more in the sphere of science and technology development, just imagine h

>Science and technology isn't something finite that either can be here or in China. It can be both places or we can specialize in different fields.

If your economy, by way of short-sighted CEOs, is pushing manufacturing overseas, what good is it to become an engineer (you know, someone who designs what's manufactured) if you can't be on the shop floor to debug your creation?

I live in Asia, and always had this fear that when I look at their children, I see the future. They have faces that seem to suggest "we won" or "we will win". That's the attitude I come across all too often. They seem to be into their own master race allot in these parts. That's all I know. There is only one globe. This is a global issue. Anyone who says that China are only interested in continental supremacy is a deluded copout. It's a GLOBE - and it's not that big...

Blah blah blah, evil red China is hacking us. You guys do it to us too, all the time, according to your new hero Snowden, but it's all good if your team does it, right? Now watch as you guys will try your damnedest to split hairs and somehow say that China's hacking was somehow worse or that the US hacking is justified for national security. That just cements the hypocrisy.

Correct.
But the scope and dimension of what china does pales in comparison to good ole fashion spying.
encryption...cant do that in china.
manufacturing - got to give them your designs....
get the flow?

US would have already be fucked. That fact is that Windows dominates in China and the majority of Chinese backbones are bought from US companies such as Cisco. And everybody would assume the backdoors have already been planted.

Rest assured, only US is capable of building PRISM system or stuxnet virus. As a Chinese I see no difference in two regimes, US and China. They are both controlled by special interest groups. Neither of those countries are mine. As average people we are just given crumbs of the big pie. Only difference is that Americans got enough crumbs, not because the special interest group is more benevolent, just because they can afford less people here.

Don't give the shit like communist. China is not a communist or socialist country and it never is. Now it is pure capitalist like US, the worst kind of capitalism in the world.

While the secrecy and surveillance in the US are worthy of criticism, Chinese people like myself can still see some clear differences. For example, where are dissenting CPC members when it comes to censorship, targeting of journalists, jailing of political writers? Where are the Leahys and Pauls of Chinese government? What happens to the Glenn Greenwalds and Noam Chomskys of Chinese journalism and academia?

While the secrecy and surveillance in the US are worthy of criticism, Chinese people like myself can still see some clear differences. For example, where are dissenting CPC members when it comes to censorship, targeting of journalists, jailing of political writers? Where are the Leahys and Pauls of Chinese government? What happens to the Glenn Greenwalds and Noam Chomskys of Chinese journalism and academia?

Indeed. The recent NSA revelations are quite bad, but there is a long way to go between that, and forbidding journalistic coverage of Tiananmen Square in '89. That Google/Yahoo/Microsoft saw fit to collaborate with that censorship while building their digital financial empire of data and servers on the internet...

Obama's recent summit with the Chinese president was probably so successful because they both agreed to spy on each other's countries and exchange intelligence so they could each avoid the flak from their own constituents!

Notice all the people here defending the NSA from Snowden's disclosures? Me neither. If China isn't doing this to its own citizens then they probably have a crash program to catch up. Is getting screwed by our own government in one respect a good reason to let China screw us in other respects?

See, here is your problem, you Americans never seem to understand one simple concept: "Mind your own business".

By your own reasoning you don't know how to mind your own business, since (I infer from your post) you're not an American, and you're posting on an American website where American politics are frequently discussed. Unless you're Chinese, then by your own reasoning you really don't know how to mind your own business, since this is about Chinese and American issues.

Let's point fingers at everyone else and ignore the fact that the US is still the worst of them all, combined.

As always, the most inflammatory comments come from AC's. If you're going to make an argument, at least be prepared to defend it. There are too many people here by the name of "Anonymous Coward" to do that.

People post as Anon for similar reasons as to why people protest while wearing masks in corrupt police states.

They're afraid that jackbooted Slashdotters will break into their homes at night and drag them off, never to be seen again?

If you have something to say, which is a valid, but very unpopular opinion, sure, you can post with your real handle, but then you'll just get bad karma

Oooh, bad karma. Is that anything like the gulag?

I honestly don't know how much courage I have to stand up to jackbooted thugs in a corrupt police state, but I'm incredibly intrepid when it comes to posting unpopular arguments on Slashdot using my "real" name (full disclosure: ebno-10db is not the name on my birth certificate). I even do it at the risk of my life giving karma!

About 40 years ago, sitting US President Richard Nixon went to China. The plane landed in Shanghai China and there Nixon did some business regarding the Shanghai Accords. The Shanghai accords were a written document that organized or stabilized the enormous gap between Communist Chinese political ideology and American political ideology.

I highly recommend John Adam's opera Nixon In China. Fragments are available on Youtube and Wikipedia has a very helpful series of entries that describe the historical visit

When people watch a purported spy movie where a lone hacker can hack the computers of a spy-agency [imdb.com] and blow-up the heating - and not laugh out loud - then I suppose they would have no problem swallowing this heap of cyber-bullshit and no mentions of Visual Basic [youtube.com] in the entire review..

Yet another 'war'. And once again the evil ghost of Communism is raised from its grave. Some people just can't let go of the past, it seems.

I'm not denying that China spies on more or less everybody else; I just don't think their spying is any different from what the US, Israel, UK,... do, and the motivation is in all cases the same: they want to get ahead in the game. It is a very naughty thing to do, but the again, keeping secrets is not a squeeky clean thing either, when you think of it. It's part of li

::I just don't think their spying is any different from what the US, Israel, UK,... do, and the motivation is in all cases the same
IT IS!
When a US firm sets up shop in Isreal, UK, etc....is encryption prohibited? do they have to share their architecture w/. the military? NO!
But in china...yes!
so they are not the same.

This guy is pushing an agenda that is likely linked to lucrative government contracting. Check out his linkedin profile:
Former Member President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Committee
Latest Book: The Chinese Information War: Espionage, Cyberwar, Communications Control and Related Threats to United States Interests (McFarland Publishing) on sale March 29, 2013
Former faculty: Defense Security Institute, VCU, NOVA and Federal Examination Council of the Federal Reserve Board
Former Staff Consultant,

Look at it this wayhis experience proves the facts.
And it is not just him.Mandiant report, etc.
Google will show 500k examples.
So he may be a biased beltway insider.but that does not mean what he wrote is not the truth.